Daniel Radcliffe Flexes New Muscles With 'Horns'

Daniel Radcliffe is ready to return to the fantasy game, but in a very different way than you've seen him before. Cast aside your notions of lightning bolt scars, golden snitches and other Hogwarts staples, in other words because "Horns" is as far away from "Harry Potter" as it possibly gets.

Directed by "The Hills Have Eyes" helmer Alexandre Aja, "Horns," based on the best-selling novel by Joe Hill, centers on a young man (Radcliffe) who is the prime suspect in the brutal killing of his girlfriend. One morning, he wakes up with a horrific hangover and a set of horns growing out of his head. He quickly leans that the horns have the ability to force people to confess their darkest sins. With this new power in tow, the newly-horned man sets off to put his skills to the test and find out who really killed his girlfriend.

"The script is so good, the story," Radcliffe told MTV News recently about why he was attracted to the film, which starts shooting this fall. "There's nothing really, I think, that can be so exciting to an actor as an original idea. It's an original idea that's tackled in an original, fresh and vibrant way."

"There are opportunities, especially at the beginning of the script, for some very dark humor," he continued. "It's a script that, as it goes on, becomes really very emotional. It has the potential to be very moving and kind of heartbreaking, really."

Even without his iconic "Potter" scar, Radcliffe's forehead is in for a bit of a makeover in "Horns," as the title and premise suggest. The British actor has seen "some mocked-up pictures of what it might end up looking like," and it's nothing like one of pop-culture's other most identifiable horned heroes.

"Hel! lboy is what we're trying to avoid," he laughed. "It's not that on-the-nose. It is interesting. There will be a lot of prosthetics involved towards the end, because some terrible things happen to my character."

As much as any other reason to get involved in "Horns," Radcliffe said he's excited for the film to show that both he and Aja (traditionally viewed for his blood-and-guts horror fare like "Hills" and "High Tension") are ready to display new sides of their craft.

"I love the idea that Alex and I are in kind of similar places, where everybody is very willing to put us both in boxes and assume that there are certain things we do and certain things we don't want to do," said Radcliffe. "I think we're both very keen to flex new muscles, both of us."

Check out everything we've got on "Horns."